APB gunning for an M

Funcom's Age of Conan showed that a massively multiplayer online game can succeed despite (or perhaps because of) a lot of gore and a few stray nipples. Although the Norwegian developer's Hyborian Adventures may be the first mainstream MMO to carry an M for Mature rating, it likely won't be the last.

Realtime Worlds president Tony Harmon told GameSpot today that he's expecting his modern-day cops-and-robbers game APB to land an M from the Entertainment Software Rating Board. Though the game has no release date yet, the developer is planning to submit it to the ratings process next year.

Earlier this year, Realtime Worlds purchased the publishing rights to APB back from its original partner on the game, Korean outfit Webzen. Harmon said that the game has no publishing deal in place at the moment, but Realtime has been talking with "pretty much all the big players."

Little has been revealed about the game since Realtime founder and Grand Theft Auto creator Dave Jones made it the focus of a Game Developers Conference session in February, but Harmon said that Realtime will start talking about the project a little more sometime this fall. Until then, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.